A project yielding 6,000,000 unique images, created by combining 10 different component element types of almost 100 total unique element variations. A small sample can be seen below.
Software used for this project: Houdini, Nuke.
The workflow consisted of procedurally-generated assets, which were then curated and chosen. For example, we generated ~30 cloud variations, out of which the art director picked around 17. Likewise, we had multiple variations for the various elements – water splashes, ice, fire, lava, liquid metal, glowing rocks.
If needed, this would’ve allowed us to generate even more variations for each element; however, each element was still hand-tuned to fit the art direction.
We also created several unique backdrops, which represented different rarity. We added color variation templates to each element in Nuke.
Then, we created compositing templates for each element in Nuke, as well as hand-tweaked overrides for particular combinations. With a simple script, we produced the needed number of variations. Since the desired number of assets was not exhaustive of our total combinations pool, we tweaked the script to randomize exclusions from each group of elements.